Sawyer
Editor’s Pick

A cavernous 1920s-era sawmill building just off Ballard Ave is now home to oxtail nachos, crisped porchetta platters, nduja-spiked “cheesy bread” and other dishes that draw from the two halves of chef Mitch Mayers’s mind. A former chef de cuisine at Lark, he can deliver an elegant composition of spot prawns, then turn around and present jojos as cragged and crisp as the most carefully tended fried chicken. Playful food. Fancy food. A high-low supercut fueled by nimbly balanced cocktails in a room carefully layered in herringbone walls and storm-blue banquettes. Take Sawyer at face value and it’s still worth an immediate drive to Ballard. But there’s more to this place: Mayers’s fine dining background and his family’s three-generation background in fair concessions inform one another, and transform his plates into something more ingenious. The proof is in the labor intensive yet freakout-worthy choco tacos.